biography of thandie newton

Thandiwe Newton

IMDbPro Starmeter Top 5,000 55

• Contact info
• 18 wins & 44 nominations total

• Christine (as Thandie Newton)

• Maeve Millay
• 2016–2022 • 36 eps

• Nyah Hall (as Thandie Newton)

• Linda (as Thandie Newton)
• Eshe (voice)
• In Production
• Dr. Fairburn

• Mona (voice)
• 27 episodes

• Ginger (voice)

• 36 episodes

• Celia Harrison

• Emily 'Watts' Sanders

• Journalist (as Thandie Newton)

• Val (as Thandie Newton)

• Bonnie Soyinka (as Thandie Newton)

• Thandie (as Thandie Newton)

• Roz (as Thandie Newton)

• Grace Travis (as Thandie Newton)
• 24 episodes

• Aisha (as Thandie Newton)

• Olanna (as Thandie Newton)

• executive producer

• executive producer (as Thandie Newton)
• performer: "Agressive Woman"

• performer: "Main Title" (uncredited)

• performer: "Pullin' The Skiff"

Personal details

• Thandie Newton
• 5′ 3″ (1.60 m)
• November 6 , 1972
• Westminster, London, England, UK
• Ol Parker July 11, 1998 - present (3 children)
• Children Ripley Parker
• Parents Nyasha Newton
• Jamie Newton (Sibling)
• Other works TV commercial for "Olay 7" Total Effects day moisturizer.
• 4 Interviews
• 6 Pictorials
• 8 Magazine Cover Photos

Did you know

• Trivia She named her daughter Ripley after the character played by Sigourney Weaver in Alien (1979) .
• Quotes It was hysterical. We wanted to make it naughty and fun. When the camera stopped rolling, it was hard to stop laughing. - about her love scene with Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible II (2000) .
• Westworld ( 2016 ) $250,000 /episode (Season 3)
• How old is Thandiwe Newton?
• When was Thandiwe Newton born?
• Where was Thandiwe Newton born?

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Thandiwe Newton

Highest Rated: 98% Liyana (2017)

Lowest Rated: 9% Norbit (2007)

Birthday: Nov 6, 1972

Birthplace: London, England, UK

After an already enviable career, British actress Thandie Newton found herself swept into a pop culture whirlwind with her role in the sci-fi hit "Westworld" (HBO, 2016-). A native of London, the actress is of royal blood, the daughter of a Zimbabwean princess. She made her screen debut starring with Nicole Kidman in "Flirting" (1991). Supporting roles followed at regular intervals, including appearing with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in "Interview With The Vampire" (1994), playing Sally Hemings in "Jefferson in Paris" (1995), and haunting Oprah Winfrey in "Beloved" (1998). She found a wider audience when she re-teamed with Cruise for the blockbuster "Mission: Impossible II" (2000). She continued in a similar vein, starring with Mark Wahlberg in Jonathan Demme's "The Truth About Charlie" (2002) and with Vin Diesel in "The Chronicles of Riddick" (2004). She then joined the ensemble of surprise Best Picture Oscar-winner "Crash" (2004), playing the wife of Terrence Howard's director. The role earned Newton a BAFTA. She went on to play Will Smith's estranged wife in "The Pursuit of Happyness" (2006) and was Eddie Murphy's romantic interest in the broad comedy "Norbit" (2007). She also had a memorable story arc on "ER" (NBC, 1994-2009) as a love interest to Noah Wyle's Dr. John Carter. After playing Condoleezza Rice in Oliver Stone's political drama "W" (2008), she returned to big budget fare starring in Roland Emmerich's disaster film "2012" (2009). A series of less successful film projects led the actress back to television. She starred in the limited series "The Slap" (ABC, 2015) and the police drama "Rogue" (Audience, 2013-17). She followed with her most acclaimed role in the updating of the Michael Crichton 1973 film "Westworld." Newton played the android Maeve Millay, the madame of a brothel who becomes self-aware. The actress was hailed by critics and earned multiple Emmy nominations for the role. Between long breaks in the shooting of the series, she appeared in a story arc of "Line of Duty" (BBC, 2012-) and became part of the "Star Wars" universe with a supporting role in "Solo: A Star Wars Story" (2018). She then joined Kit Harington and Natalie Portman for the drama "The Death and Life of John F. Donovan" (2018).

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“I’m Taking Back What’s Mine”: The Many Lives Of Thandiwe Newton

By Diana Evans

The story begins with the thundering mist of Victoria Falls, 1972. A Zimbabwean princess and a lab technician from Cornwall were driving along a bumpy road about to enjoy a sardine snack. When the sardine can was opened, the oil spilled all over the woman’s dress and she laughed her head off. The man thought, “I need to be with this woman,” and there were rainbows criss-crossing the sky from the magic of the mist and the sun above the crashing water. On that trip, contained in this magic, a child was conceived. They named her Thandiwe, meaning beloved in Zulu. She grew up to be one of the most successful Black-British actresses of her time.

By Edward Enninful

Switch now to Cornwall, three years later. “I mean holy hell,” she says. “We may as well have been the first Black people anyone had ever seen. We didn’t have conditioner. We didn’t have anything.” There her mother, the granddaughter of a Shona chief, hence her royal lineage, became an NHS health worker, while her father took over his family’s antiques business. Meanwhile Thandiwe and her younger brother attended a Catholic primary school run by joyless nuns, where she was once excluded from a class photograph for sporting cornrows and made to feel like an in-house missionary project, and where the W of her name drifted inward, out of sight and earshot, in a futile hope to make her feel less different. She eventually replaced the greens and shores of the West Country with the urban smoke of north-west London.

Thandiwe wearing Kenneth Ize in British Vogue ’s May 2021 issue. 

By Emma Spedding

By Chioma Nnadi

I first interviewed Thandiwe Newton around 20 years ago in the lobby of a Covent Garden hotel, for the cover of Black women’s magazine Pride (this cover story is about that much time overdue). She was wearing gym clothes and looked wistfully childlike. Nowadays you won’t see her in a gym, you will not see her jogging (“I hate exercise”), but back then she was preparing to star opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible II and had to do stunts. She played the beautiful thief and love interest Nyah Nordoff-Hall; a couple of years before that she had played the title role in the Toni Morrison-adaptation Beloved ; a year before that the waifish, moody singer in Gridlock’d alongside Tupac Shakur. She later won a BAFTA for her performance in Crash and became the first Black woman to play a prominent character in a Star Wars film.

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Despite these achievements she has never quite received the glory she deserves as a British national treasure and screen icon; that coy and elfin face, the dignified grace and the remarkable versatility of her talent, this is a career both long-standing and long undervalued. Her roles have been varied and cross-genre – among her favourites is Olanna in 2013’s Half of a Yellow Sun – spanning three decades and gradually becoming aligned with her political activism, culminating in her Emmy-winning and Golden Globe-nominated performance as the android brothel-madam Maeve Millay in the HBO hit sci-fi series Westworld , this year shooting its fourth season. “I can tell when people haven’t watched Westworld because they just think I’m being naked and sexy in it,” Newton says. “But I love how subversive it is. Wherever I position myself now, I don’t want to be part of the problem, I want to be part of the solution. I’m not for hire anymore. I’m not going to speak your story or say your words if I don’t feel they could’ve come from me.”

This time we meet in the flattening sphere of Zoom on the day that Trump defiled the Capitol . The streets of north-west London are spare. Britain is in its third national lockdown. Approaching the screen from across her warmly lit bedroom she arrives as a light, bright presence, wearing hoop earrings and an orange sweatshirt, looking, at 48, basically unaged. “I’ve changed a whole lot,” she laughs knowingly. “Many lives have been lived since then.” She is a passionate and expansive conversationalist, leaping from one subject to another (factory farms, colonialism, motherhood, literature), easily moved to tears and somehow tactile, even in this format. She is a vegan on political and humanitarian grounds, and counts among her heroes the Congolese gynaecologist, human rights activist and Nobel Peace laureate Denis Mukwege.

By Alice Cary

In other parts of the house are her children – Booker, seven, Nico , 16, and Ripley, 20, whose girlfriend is staying with them during lockdown – and her husband of 23 years, the screenwriter and director Ol Parker, who pops into the room occasionally to bring her a drink or remind her about a meeting – she’s in discussions about adapting the story of a black-versus-white shoot-out in 1940s Cornwall between American soldiers, and is due back on set for the forthcoming CIA thriller All the Old Knives . This year also sees the release of sci-fi romance Reminiscence , the directorial debut of Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy, in which she stars with Hugh Jackman, and the completion of the timely neo-Western God’s Country . When offered the Westworld role in 2014 Newton was close to retiring from acting, having just had her last baby and quit her role in the Canadian police drama Rogue because of mistreatment, and was turning her attention to writing. Now, with Hollywood knocking more loudly than ever, it seems likely that we will see her ascend to middle-age thespian darlinghood, like a Helen Mirren or Regina King , starlit in maturity.

While amazed at her resurgence she is mindful of its shadow. “I find that acting takes more and more away from me,” she says with candour, “because I’m more connected to myself than I’ve ever been, whereas before I was delighted to get an excuse to go off to another personality. I couldn’t wait to get away from myself, truly, I had such low self-esteem. Acting was where I felt whole.” The nuns hadn’t helped. Nor had the dance teacher at her extracurricular lessons in Cornwall, who’d annually bypassed the brilliant brown ballerina at trophy time. Newton pursued her dance aspirations at a performing arts secondary boarding school in Hertfordshire before moving to London, but was curtailed by a back injury and switched her focus to acting. It was disconcerting, too, that this same brownness was to become a site of manipulation, confusion and psychological violence on entering the movie industry.

In Duro Olowu. Newton wanted her cover shoot to reflect her dual heritage. 

The summer she took her GCSEs, when auditioning for her debut role, alongside Nicole Kidman in Flirting , the Australian director John Duigan was not quite satisfied with her shade. “Can you be a bit darker?” he said. “I dunno,” said Thandiwe. “Be darker by Monday,” he said. So she spent the weekend covered in coconut oil and frantically bronzing. “Got the role. Colourism has just been the funniest. I’ve been too Black, not Black enough. I’m always Black. I’m just like, whadda you people want!” It was Duigan, incidentally, who went on to play the real-life role of sexual predator to that darkened, virginal 16-year-old schoolgirl more than 20 years his junior once filming began in Australia. That definitely didn’t help.

By Susan Devaney

Newton has been a staunch and persistent whistle-blower on the subject of sexual violence and harassment, in Hollywood and beyond, for decades. Long before #metoo and Time’s Up , she was challenging the great wall of silence and enablement surrounding the high crimes and misdemeanours of the entertainment moguls, the Weinsteins and Epsteins, the Cosbys and Kellys, while meeting angry rebuff and gaslighting along the way, at one point terminating a contract with a publicist who begged her to stop talking about being sexually abused because it was “not good for your reputation”. For her, silence was not an option. Speaking out was a reflex, a reach for what had been lost and some justice to cushion the void. “There’s a moment where the ghost of me changed, you know,” she says thoughtfully, zoning back in time, eyes hardened, “and it was then, it was 16. He derailed me from myself utterly. I was traumatised. It was a kind of PTSD for sure. I was so distraught and appalled that a director had abused a young actress, and that it was happening elsewhere, minors getting abused and how f**ked up it was. I was basically waiting for someone to come along and say, ‘Well, what shall we do about this?’’’

And they did, in droves, the women. Me Too, the phrase coined by activist Tarana Burke in 2006, became a hashtag storm that would morph into one of the largest social uprisings in modern history, defying structures of inequity and leading to such incredible things as a woman and a man earning exactly the same amount of money for exactly the same amount of work on-set, as recently occurred at HBO among the Westworld cast. Newton and Evan Rachel Wood now earn the same as their male counterparts, setting a precedent in the industry that Newton wants to see normalised.

“It wasn’t a celebration. I was disgusted,” she says, and she is pragmatic about the continuing need to challenge silencing and abuses of power. “Even though people know they can speak out now, there is still the fear of losing their job. I mean literally, people still say, ‘There’s someone else who could take this position, if you’re not happy’, that kind of shit. I do think studio heads need to take much more responsibility.” Newton sees the money she earns from her acting as “compensation” for the emotional turmoil caused by such abuses of power – the casting director who filmed and shared intimate audition footage of her at 18, that prior derailment at 16 and its lethal fusion with an ego stunted by early racism. “I didn’t have a harbour, a lighthouse. I was just lost all the time. I punished my body to try and find my heart.” 

The violations by Duigan lasted five years, two of which were termed a “relationship” after he sought Newton’s parents’ blessing for her to be his girlfriend when she was 18, while asking her to hide their previous intimacy. If passers-by questioned with their eyes what this older man was doing with this young girl, he would tell her they were being racist, towards her, and she believed him. “It was textbook, really boring textbook.” At 20, Newton managed to free herself and moved into her first flat, there continuing with her anthropology degree at Cambridge and doing two more films with Duigan out of shame and guilt for “abandoning” him. As a coping mechanism for these warped feelings, the ability to control her body’s intake of food became her friend. Thus ensued “the most horrific dance with something that’s supposed to bring you life”, which would almost kill her. One night, just before the filming of Gridlock’d in 1996, she was rescued: “I was lying in bed, so thin, and my heart was beating against my ribcage so hard that I could see it, and my friend Jessica called. I said ‘Jessica, I’m worried I’m going to die.’ And that was it. I suddenly realised there was something very, very dangerous and dark within. She said, ‘You’ve got to go and talk to somebody.’”

Therapy and personal development have benefited Newton substantially over time, in particular the Hoffman Process, as well as the philosophy of Buddhism. Years later that dance with death no longer rears its head. When asked what advice she would give to someone struggling with an eating disorder, she takes great care in answering. “I wish I could talk to you,” she says, “and the questions that I would ask you would range all over your life, from the first memory, because you’re unique, and the same power that is driving you to hurt yourself, you can change that to a power to nurture yourself, once you find the kernel of truth that has been denied you.”

Married to Parker at 25, Newton’s career progressed impressively through her twenties and thirties while she became a mother, always taking her family with her on projects abroad. But roles were lost in her refusal to play to racial and sexual stereotyping, such as 2000’s Charlie’s Angels , when derogatory and ignorant comments made by former Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal about what a Black female character should be – sexy, not university educated (Pascal says she has no memory of the event) – made Newton quit, she was replaced by Lucy Liu. On the release of Beloved , Newton was asked by a South African Hollywood Foreign Press Association journalist, “Will you sign my magazine in African?”, and this made her rebuff the organisation for years. Most of all she refused to pander to silencing. “I have a seventh sense for abuse and abusers,” she says, “which I believe is one of the reasons why I was rejected a lot in Hollywood. I’ll talk about it until the cows come home, because I know I’ll be helping someone.”

Wearing Fendi Haute Couture on her British Vogue cover. 

It was the American playwright, performer and feminist Eve Ensler who enabled Newton to move out of the victim mindset instilled in her by trauma. In 2011 she went to see Ensler perform The Vagina Monologues at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington, on a casual invitation along the lines of, “Do you wanna come and see that crazy lady talking about fannies?” Afterwards, the two women got talking and a whole other way of thinking emerged: “It was the first time, apart from with my husband, where I didn’t feel ashamed about what had happened. She was just this amazing, radiant energy.” Following this meeting, Newton became part of a community of victims-turned-survivors trying to make change. “When I started joining in I found myself around a lot more people of colour. Isn’t that strange?” she says. “Well, because there are so many women of colour who’ve been abused, and who are the spine of their community or the spine of their family. Black women are truly the nexus where all of this overlaps. Think of what else has the potential to heal if we support and care for Black women.”

Newton has an activist soul, turned outwards to the world, magnanimous and wise, sharpened into an instrument of power. Alongside her TV and film commitments she advocates for the African American Policy Forum and the #sayhername campaign founded by her friend Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term “intersectionality”. She is also a board member of Eve Ensler’s V-Day, through which she has supported women survivors of sexual violence in Congo with the City of Joy project, and helped establish One Billion Rising which campaigns to end violence against women, spurred by the UN statistic that one in three women will be abused in her lifetime. Activism now far outweighs acting in order of importance – it meant a lot to Newton that the OBE she was awarded in 2018 was for services to charity as well as to film. “Individuals count,” she says, buoyed by the hope and possibility of our troubled time. “We can make a difference.”

In Shona custom, the royal lineage passes down through generations, which means that Newton’s daughters, Ripley and Nico, are also princesses, like their grandmother and great-grandmother, as well as Thandiwe herself. Her Twitter bio reads simply “Mother”, and this seems the most central of all of her roles. “When I had my children it was like, ‘Oh, finally I can love me.’ I could love them and not in any way question my love, whether it was worthy of them.” Her youngest daughter Nico, at 16, is already four years into her own acting career, with lead parts in Dumbo and The Third Day . “I went to every photoshoot with her,” Newton says with a fire in her eyes. “If there was an issue with the photographer, if there was inappropriate language I was on it, didn’t give a f**k what anyone thought. When it was time for her to get an agent, I spent a month auditioning for one, even though I knew half of them.”

Newton’s parents live in London now and their proudest moment is their daughter’s OBE – her mother never misses an opportunity to watch the royals on TV (“She’s got more national pride than I have”). Newton, though, posits herself as a Londoner as opposed to British, and remembers a British newspaper pointing out when she won the BAFTA that she was not really British because one of her parents was Black. “I remember thinking, ‘But it’s a British win! Why don’t you wanna take that? Why would you not wanna dig that and embrace it and feel really good?’” She is pained by the same old period dramas and lack of diversity that have traditionally sent British actors of colour seeking opportunity and visibility across the Atlantic. But things are changing, and she is one of the engines of change, a role model for little brown girls who want to be dancers or Hollywood actors or activists or one day see themselves on the cover of Vogue . It was essential to her that the clothes used in this long-belated photoshoot reflect her dual heritage, thus a bold Versace suit paired with a length of African fabric bought from Shepherd’s Bush, and the work of designers such as Duro Olowu , Kenneth Ize and Cheyenne Kimora featured alongside European-heritage brands.

No longer is Newton afraid of the red carpet because of how much it reminded her of her invisibility, and she looks forward to a future where the illusion of race will no longer narrow who we are. “The thing I’m most grateful for in our business right now is being in the company of others who truly see me. And to not be complicit in the objectification of Black people as ‘others’, which is what happens when you’re the only one.” All her future films will be credited with Thandiwe Newton, after the W was carelessly missed out from her first credit. Now she’s in control. Many lives lived and she’s come out triumphant, preserved in the magic of the mist and sun that made her, and wanted her to shine. “That’s my name. It’s always been my name. I’m taking back what’s mine.”

Diana Evans is the author of Ordinary People, The Wonder and 26a

The May 2021 issue of British Vogue is on newsstands on 9 April.

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By Alice Newbold

Thandie Newton Biography

Thandie Newton

Mission: Impossible 2 star Thandie Newton originally set her sights on becoming a dancer. The daughter of a Zimbabwean mother (a princess of the Shona tribe) and an English father, she spent her early years in Zambia until political unrest forced the family to move to England. Enrolled at London's Art Educational School at age 11, she studied modern dance. After being sidelined for a time with a back injury, she was encouraged to audition for a role in Australian director John Duigan's Flirting. The movie was a huge success in Australia and a launching pad for another notable, actress Nicole Kidman, but Newton's career languished, so she turned her attention to earning a degree in anthropology from Cambridge University, while picking up acting gigs, notably Interview with a Vampire (1994) and Jefferson in Paris (1995), between semesters. Roles in Bertolucci's so-so Besieged and Beloved were next, but her career soared when she landed a role opposite Tom Cruise in his second Mission: Impossible outing. Jonathon Demme's The Truth About Charlie (2001) paired her with Mark Wahlberg. She was a member of the cast of the critically-acclaimed Crash (2005). Married to English-Spanish director Oliver Parker, she gave birth to daughter Ripley in 2000 and another daughter, Nico, in 2004.

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Thandiwe Newton Feeds Her Soul With Critical Race Theory and Cleo Sol

The “Westworld” actress talks about her new Audible recording of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and why too much entertainment can be bad for you.

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By Kathryn Shattuck

For Thandiwe Newton, recording an audiobook isn’t merely sinking into a comfy chair in front of a mic and trying not to trip over the words. Especially when it’s a literary behemoth like Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.”

The epic undertaking “was a thrill because I’m a Black African-English woman, and I have a perspective which I invite the audiences to join me on,” said Newton, who has reclaimed the spelling of her name given at birth. “I give my emotion to it. I encounter Napoleon — Thandiwe does. I encounter Natasha. I comment with the way I breathe and the energy I put in my body and voice as I digest the different ideas that Tolstoy puts forward, different values.”

Still, there were moments far less wondrous.

“I practically gag in passages where he’s talking about Negroes,” she said. But when the Audible representatives asked whether she wanted them removed, “I said, my God, no . It’s essential that we see his ignorance, that we feel his lack when he’s so brilliant writing about the psychology of men and war and philosophy and history.”

Newton has turned that eye of evaluation on her own life and career. She is an executive producer of “President,” a documentary about the first presidential election in Zimbabwe after Robert Mugabe resigned. The film had just been nominated for a Gotham Award and shortlisted by IDA Documentary Awards. She has wrapped “God’s Country,” about a Black professor who relocates from New Orleans to Montana and finds herself the victim of mysterious bullying. And she is currently in Los Angeles shooting the fourth season of HBO’s “Westworld.”

“But after that, I don’t want to be hired as an actress anymore,” said Newton — her passions now more aligned with empowering others, writing and producing, and stepping in front of the camera only on her own terms. “I don’t want to give myself anymore. I’ve come to the end of it — and I feel amazing. I feel full.”

Still, she went on, “the way I’ve been treated as a woman of color being an actor, the stories that I haven’t been able to tell, the limited characters that I’ve had to frustratingly wrestle with to provide truth, the pain I’ve suffered over being treated badly in work situations, and also the sad, sad waste — because I know that there’s so much more I could have done — I’m now really tired. I just don’t feel that it’s worth what I put in.”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

1. Critical Race Theory The academic endeavor of critical race theory is to reveal what is already happening, which is that we are progressing, we are evolving, and it’s important that we document our progress. And people who want things to stay the way they have been, because it has benefited them to enslave Africa, to exploit India, to abuse South America — you name it, humans have done it. We’re a grubby lot. But we are making progress because every living entity wants to heal. Every living thing is trying to move towards the sun.

2. Documentaries, Especially Werner Herzog’s I think you could put a spotlight on literally anybody and create a documentary. And I love documentary because it asks us to really look, really see, really witness. If I could only talk about one, I want to talk about Werner Herzog for sure. “Grizzly Man” is an absolute epic. That’s a Shakespearean character right there, Timothy Treadwell [who lived with bears in Alaska, and was killed by one].

3. Shona-to-English Translator My mother speaks five different African languages, but Shona is her first. It’s the language of her childhood, her people, her history, her original culture. And I don’t speak it. And the more I’ve been encountering modern Zimbabwe, looking at my own history, wanting to create an archive for my children, the more I’ve been trying to update my vocabulary. So my Shona-to-English translator has become a real pal in recent years.

4. Music as Protest I’m discovering myself through music at the moment in a really interesting way, and it’s kind of mirroring my experience as a woman, as a mother. I’m loving Cleo Sol right now. I love music as protest. I think songwriters, singers, are shamans. They are touching a divine — certainly not all — but they open up the landscape of their spirit, their soul. I think of people like Tommy Yorke, Billie Eilish — performers, creatives, artists who touch a nerve, almost like an acupuncture when you hit that meridian and it just taps into something.

I’m fascinated by Kanye West — Ye, as he now is. I’m interested in the art, commerce, media, religion, protest, personal trauma, how that’s all playing out in his work. I don’t think it’s healthy for one person to be so obsessed to have the spotlight on them. One of the sad things about our time is that we’re all gazing at the moon, or gazing at these people who are gazing at the moon, when we shouldn’t be so distracted. It’s like James Baldwin said: Entertainment is a narcotic. I feel like the entertainment business is like getting your vaccination. Some of it is really good for you; too much of it going to kill you.

5. WTF With Marc Maron I wanted to be on for years and years, and he never invited me. My poor little ego got slapped about because I thought he was so wonderful. [But eventually] I had the enormous honor of having him encounter me . We spoke about really painful, tough things, and he was a lovely, grumpy teddy bear.

6. Contemporary Dance I was a dancer, and I did a TEDGlobal talk called “Embracing Otherness.” [I said that] I grew up on the coast of England in the ’70s. My dad is white from Cornwall, and my mom is Black from Zimbabwe. From about the age of 5, I was aware that I didn’t fit. My skin color wasn’t right. My hair wasn’t right. My history wasn’t right. My self became defined by otherness. [But when I was dancing] I’d literally lose myself. And I was a really good dancer. I would put all my emotional expression into my dancing. I could be in the movement in a way that I wasn’t able to be in my life, in myself.

7. V-Day I love the podcast “Intersectionality Matters!” with Kimberlé Crenshaw, who is one of the creators of critical race theory. She’s also a dear friend and was a fellow board member of the organization V-Day — brainchild of Eve Ensler, its goal is to end violence against women and girls worldwide — where we met a decade ago. She’s devoted literally her life and her relationships to law and to human rights, and to empowering women of color and attempting to ensure their protection and justice for the crimes against them. I’m collaborating with Kimberlé and the African American Policy Forum on a project dealing with police brutality against women of color. Kimberlé coined the hashtag #SayHerName, which was inspiration for the song by Janelle Monáe , Beyoncé, Alicia Keys and others.

8. James Baldwin James Baldwin is to be read by everyone, everything, all of it. Just the genius of him — his sexuality, how he thought about religion, race. My husband spent years trying to find, because it’s out of print, “A Rap on Race” by Margaret Mead and James Baldwin. I should put every page on Instagram, just to share with people.

9. Margaret Mead Margaret Mead to me is like a rock star. Like super cool . I’m an anthropologist [who studied at Cambridge] and an archaeologist by trade. And I do see the bigger picture, unfortunately and fortunately. I see what humanity is doing, and the fact that this is all in the last tiny blip of time, and we’re [expletive] it up so severely.

10. The Freedom From Torture Charity The only professional play that I’ve had the honor to be part of was “Death and the Maiden,” which is by Ariel Dorfman. I did it at the Comedy Theater in London’s West End. The character I played, Paulina, was a torture survivor, and the director set up time at the charity Freedom From Torture so that we could talk to survivors. I spoke to a Congolese woman and a man from Chad, and it changed my life. I’ve been part of Freedom From Torture — ambassador, fund-raiser — ever since. I think it’s of incredible importance to have a sense of what people go through in the war between nations, the war within a nation, the jockeying for power and the cheapness of human life that is illustrated in the way that we control minds and bodies through torture as a way of manipulating people. It’s unspeakable.

Thandiwe Newton

Thandie-newton-bio-450x600.jpg.

Thandie Newton

Awards & Nominations

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More about Thandiwe Newton at:

Thandiwe Newton is an English actress. She has appeared in several British and American films, and is known for roles such as Linda in The Pursuit of Happyness , Nyah Nordoff-Hall in Mission: Impossible 2 and Christine in Crash , for which she received a number of awards, including a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She played the sentient android, the madam Maeve Millay in the HBO science fiction-Western television series Westworld , which earned her three Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.

Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Drama Series - 2020

• Thandiwe Newton (as Thandie Newton), as Maeve
• HBO Entertainment in association with Kilter Films, Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television

Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Drama Series - 2018

• HBO Entertainment in association with Kilter Films, Bad Robot, Warner Bros. Television

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series - 2017

The Television Academy database lists prime-time Emmy information. Click here to learn more

Thandie Newton accepts award at the 70th Emmy Awards. 

Thandie Newton on the red carpet at the 70th Emmy Awards.

70th Emmy Awards: Thandie Newton Wins For Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Drama Series

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“Are you fucking joking?”

Thandiwe Newton speaks out on her Star Wars death: “A big mistake”

Thandiwe Newton thrives on chaos.

Best known for playing robotic host Maeve Millay on HBO’s Westworld , Newton’s recent career choices have been all about learning to embrace the unknowns that used to keep her up at night.

“I don’t want to back away from fear,” she tells Inverse . “I want what I fear to become what I’m familiar with, so it loses its power.”

“Yes, I’m afraid,” she adds, “and yes, I’m going to do it anyway.”

Newton has spent these last few weeks of summer promoting the sci-fi noir Reminiscence , now in theaters and on HBO Max. A high-profile reunion with Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy , it follows a private investigator, Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), who scours his own memories for traces of a vanished lover (Rebecca Ferguson) using a futuristic memory machine. Newton plays Bannister’s assistant, military veteran Watts, who struggles to combat her own demons while protecting her employer from unseen threats.

Thandiwe Newton as Watts in Warner Bros. Pictures’ sci-fi thriller Reminiscence.

“I’ve been around alcoholism, and playing this character who’s dealing with her trauma and numbing herself with alcohol was fascinating,” says Newton. “She’s sleepwalking through life, but she’s the only one who receives another chance. She taught me that we must always be alive and awake to possibilities of change.”

Change has dominated Newton’s career in the half-decade since Westworld premiered. The series has earned her three consecutive Emmy nominations, including one win. Politically, she’s grown more outspoken in discussing racism, sexism, and abuse in Hollywood. She even made pop-culture history playing Val in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story , though this last experience was not an entirely positive one, and Newton doesn’t hold back as to the reasons why.

“You don’t kill off the first Black woman to ever have a real role in a Star Wars movie,” she says. “Like, are you fucking joking?”

A no-nonsense smuggler who’s part of a crew joined by Aldren Ehrenreich’s Han in Solo , Val was a prominent figure in the prequel. And, unlike multiple Star Wars characters played previously by Black actresses, she was not an alien, appearing without CGI or heavy prosthetics. But Val sacrifices herself in the first third of the film. That Solo plot point wasn’t what Newton signed on for, and she says the decision to kill Val was made for dubious reasons. (But more on that later.)

As Reminiscence hits screens, Newton is also hard at work on the fourth season of Westworld . Though little is known about what’s ahead for the series, Maeve will play an essential role. Having evolved from a saloon madam into a katana-carrying freedom fighter, the character ended Season 3 standing alongside Caleb (Aaron Paul), having liberated humanity from Rehoboam’s algorithmic control. Newton has been filming extensively, which has entailed plenty of night shoots. Slipping away from the set, she speaks to Inverse en route to the Los Angeles premiere of Reminiscence.

Though the actress apologizes for the “frantic” nature of her professional existence these days, there’s no need. Speaking by phone, Newton is warm, impassioned, articulate, and thrillingly frank. She races through our wide-ranging conversation with the kind of mile-a-minute momentum that must come naturally to an actress who, at the peak of her creative powers, has never appeared more in control .

Ahead, some conversational highlights that didn’t make Inverse ’s feature on Reminiscence , from Newton discussing Maeve’s evolution across Westworld to her candid thoughts on Solo: A Star Wars Story three years later.

Thandiwe Newton in Westworld Season 3 Episode 4.

On Westworld and onscreen nudity

Honestly, I was ready to quit. Happily, joyfully, like, “Oh, I don't have to keep acting? Fine.” I love being a mother. I love being a human rights activist. I love writing. This was my moment to step away, and not in a fearful way. It just fit. And then I got the call for Westworld . It was my husband, [ Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again director Ol Parker,] who said, “Oh, this sounds good,” because of the team involved.

The original Westworld , obviously, has got a real kind of cult value. And it's the Nolans. I mean, Inception , I fuckin’ ate that shit up, man. I love Memento . Oh, Inception was so romantic: the music, and the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio. My god, he can fucking bring a performance!

When they invited me into Westworld , it was initially to use what I’d fought hard to rid from myself in the hope of liberating others, which is toxic patriarchy and the sexual objectification of women. Would you play a prostitute? Would you play a madam in a saloon who farms out these innocent, young beauties to people who are going to rape and abuse them? They asked me to play the evil that I had daily been trying to rid from the world — and do it naked.

Part of the abuse that I’d suffered in the industry was directors who lied about how my nudity was going to be used and got me naked in ways that were inappropriate. I've also been physically sexually abused. And so, they asked me to reveal my body at a time when I wanted to retreat, [especially because] I had a six-month-old baby when I started shooting Westworld .

“That is what the first season of Westworld was, and in it was the liberation of a brown woman .”

But when they described what we were going to use it for, it was literally the whole notion of martial arts: use your enemy's strength against them. That is what the first season of Westworld was, and in it was the liberation of a brown woman. If you want to really understand how cruel and how destructive humanity is, look at the experiences of most brown women in the world. You don't get lower than that in the pecking order of what's fucking important. To be able to use that, and literally empower this character through her truth, with everything that I've wanted to do with my career. And that was why I wanted to leave the film business, because I felt like I wasn't able to do that.

Then, Westworld happened. And I wasn't expecting anything from it. Of course not. I would have done it for nothing. I needed it for myself. And that character ended up captivating people. It was so beautiful. This spring suddenly burst from the ground. And I got to actually release that, finally.

On superhero movies and critical race theory

[It’s] not my cup of tea, I'm afraid. We have superheroes on the ground right now, and they're the ones that we should be celebrating and supporting. This idea that there are these fantasy superheroes just disconnects us from really finding the superheroes that are actually here. But I am loving the reimagination of comic books that we’re seeing right now, like Thor: Ragnarok , which is more comedic but at least is shaking up that kind of franchise and fucking with the system.

I am loving what happened with [HBO’s] Watchmen . It’s so profound that they used Tulsa as the origin story for Watchmen . Most Americans didn’t know about the Tulsa massacre. and they’re trying to get rid of critical race theory!

“If you get rid of critical race theory , are you going to imprison the people that write Watchmen ?”

If you get rid of critical race theory, are you going to imprison the people that write Watchmen ? The director of 12 Years a Slave ? Lisa Joy, for writing about the reevaluation of history? Mind you, she does sci-fi, which is fucking clever, because you can’t touch sci-fi, because it’s postulating a future. Opposition to critical race theory is like Scientology, in that it wants to erase history. But if you erase history, it's like trauma survivors not dealing with their trauma. If you don't deal with your trauma, it is going to bite you in the ass, because it's going to come up in ways that you don't understand. You have to deal with your trauma. And that is what critical race theory is. That is what a reimagining of history is. That is what we're starting to see in art. And that is why we have to fight to critique critical race theory because it's inspiring so many of us artists.

Thandiwe Newton as Val in Solo: A Star Wars Story.

On Solo and how Star Wars failed its first woman-of-color protagonist

I felt disappointed by Star Wars that my character was killed. And, actually, in the script, she wasn’t killed. It happened during filming. And it was much more just to do with the time we had to do the scenes. It’s much easier just to have me die than it is to have me fall into a vacuum of space so I can come back sometime.

“In the script, [Val] wasn’t killed . It happened during filming.”

That’s what it originally was: that the explosion and she falls out and you don’t know where she’s gone. So I could have come back at some point. But when we came to filming, as far as I was concerned and was aware, when it came to filming that scene, it was too huge a set-piece to create, so they just had me blow up and I’m done. But I remembered at the time thinking, “This is a big, big mistake” — not because of me, not because I wanted to come back. You don’t kill off the first Black woman to ever have a real role in a Star Wars movie. Like, are you fucking joking?

On the future of Westworld and producing documentaries

The first season [of Westworld ] was the real epiphany. After that, I feel like we're in an entertaining show, honestly. And that’s not to discredit the show. I love the show. I think it's wonderful. But it’s all about the origin story, isn't it really? The origin story of Westworld is profound and had a massive impact.

For me now, I'm passionate about producing documentaries. I have one that’s just trying to get its way around the world, President , about Zimbabwe. It’s about the stolen election in 2018, [directed] by Camilla Nielsson, and I executive-produced it with Danny Glover. It's absolutely disturbing and sensational, and urgently important. We need to share it with people so that people can be moved to do what it is that they want. Because so much of what's foul in the world right now is what is hidden from us.

That’s what I love about Maeve in Westworld , is that she has to find the truth. It’s not readily available. She has to die again and again and again, in order to get nuggets of truth. And that, to me, spoke volumes. Maeve, in a way, is generations of humanity that have had to die for progress. In her, in the dimension of Westworld , in that fantastical place, they condense literally generations of death and loss into this one character who dies again and again. She's humanity dying again and again. That first season was astonishing.

Thandiwe Newton in Westworld Season 3 Episode 8.

On how Newton overcame self-doubt to play Watts in Reminiscence

I started to research women in the military. And unfortunately, I came across a documentary about women in the military talking about sexual abuse. Watching women in the military speak into the camera, having the courage to talk about sexual violence, [I saw] they were every kind of woman, and I realized I could be any one of them.

We think these women are tough, because they don't talk about what they have to deal with. We just assume that they don't have any of those issues. How could they? But, actually, they do, and they cover it up. They swallow it down. In order to be in the military, that's just what they have to tolerate. I realized that, not only could I be one of them, but that I have been one of them. And that I needed to honor them. Part of why both Lisa and myself had felt doubtful about me playing [the role of Watts] was because we had internalized a male portrait of women in the military. That's pretty much all we've seen on screen.

If I look at one of the actresses who completely liberated me, Jessica Chastain, who’s an extraordinary actress, she plays all the facets of womanhood in the same way as Sigourney Weaver in Alien . And so I found myself coming back to what I know in my heart. I named my kid Ripley! Why am I denying myself this [opportunity] because of the internalized internalization of a stereotype that I spend my life fighting? I realized it was such a gift. But it was my own bigotry that I've internalized, that was causing me to doubt myself. It said everything about why Lisa, as a woman, should be writing this role, and why I, as an actress, should be playing it.

On why Newton, who is British and Zimbabwean, and Reminiscence director Lisa Joy, who is British and Chinese, bonded over their cultural heritage

One of the beautiful things about coming from two different cultures is that one does feel entitled to be a person of the world, as opposed to a person of your culture. And that's something that Lisa and I share, me being from Zimbabwe and from England, and Lisa being a person from Chinese culture and British culture. She is British-Chinese, now American-Chinese but actually British-Chinese, like I’m British-African. We've had to figure out how to bring those two sides of ourselves together. And that tension between those two sides is where the magic lies.

I swear to you, and I see it in Lisa. I see it in her history and how she was brought up and what was expected of her, in the history of China and how a woman is perceived in China, and all of that, and then globalism and going to America to study the law, and to have this fantastic mind and take her legal mind into the sphere of fiction. We've come together over so many things. One is, you know, this current argument over critical race theory. She and I define intersectionality, in many ways.

And as a result, we are primed to the finest point. It makes us more creative, it makes us stronger, it makes us more determined, it makes us the absolute best we can be. We can't be complacent. We're not allowed to be. That's a luxury, man. It's a luxury for people to be complacent and to just feel like they're accepted as they walk around. I never feel accepted anywhere. So I have to accept myself. And in that bubble, that's where I exist. It’s the same with Lisa. I call myself an outlier, which comes from Westworld because it’s all about the outliers in the world they’re trying to get rid of. That’s how I define myself: as that rogue element people don’t want to admit exists.

Reminiscence is now in theaters and on HBO Max. Westworld Season 4 is expected to premiere in 2022.

Editor’s Note: After an impressively researched bit of reader mail , we’ve updated a point in our article to add, regarding Newton’s role, “Val was a prominent figure in the prequel. And, unlike multiple Star Wars characters played previously by Black actresses, she was not an alien, appearing without CGI or prosthetics.”

This article was originally published on Aug. 25, 2021

• Science Fiction

Thandiwe Newton

Thandiwe Nashita "Thandie" Newton (born 6 November 1972) is an English actress. She has appeared in a number of British and American films. Newton was born in London, the daughter of Nyasha, a Zimbabwean health-care worker and Nick Newton, a Cornish laboratory technician and artist. The name "Thandiwe" means "beloved". Raised in London and Penzance, Kernow/Cornwall, she went on to study social anthropology at Downing College, Cambridge, from 1992 to 1995. Newton made her film debut in Flirting (1991). She played the role of Brad Pitt's maid Yvette in Interview With A Vampire (1994). She gained international recognition in the Merchant Ivory production of Jefferson in Paris as Sally Hemings, which led to her being cast in Jonathan Demme's Beloved (1998), in which she played the title character alongside co-stars Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. She played the female lead Nyah Hall in the film Mission: Impossible II. Between 2003 and 2005, Newton played Makemba "Kem" Likasu, the love interest, and later wife of Dr. John Carter on the American television series ER. She reprised the role once more for the series finale in 2009. In 2004 also appeared in The Chronicles of Riddick and Crash. Newton was honoured with a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress in 2006 for her role in Crash. She also played Chris Gardner's wife, Linda Gardner, in The Pursuit of Happyness. In addition to her film and television credits she played the title role in a 2006 radio pantomime version of Cinderella. In 2007, she starred alongside Eddie Murphy in the comedy Norbit as his love interest, and opposite Simon Pegg as his ex-girlfriend in the comedy Run Fat Boy Run. Newton next portrayed U.S. National Security Advisor-turned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in W., Oliver Stone's 2008 film biography of President George W. Bush. In 2009 Newton next portrayed the United States President's First Daughter Laura Wilson in 2012. She can also be seen in Vanishing on 7th Street and For Colored Girls both released in 2010. Newton married English writer/director/producer Ol Parker in 1998. The couple have two daughters: Ripley, born in 2000, and Nico, born in 2004. Her daughters were named after the character Ellen Ripley in the Alien films and the singer Nico.

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• Thandie Newton

Thandie Newton was born in London to Nick Newton, a white British lab technician who later turned into an artist and Nyasha a healthcare worker from the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe. Thandie Newton developed a keen interest in performing arts at a very young age. She possessed an exceptional talent for dancing and obtained a scholarship to the Arts Educational School at the age of 11. However, by the time Newton was 16, several injuries barred her from continuing to dance for the entire summer. The prospect of not dancing for whole 3 months extremely depressed the young girl. That is when one of her instructors proposed that she audition for a film that was currently casting in London. Despite the fact that she had no prior acting experience, Newton won the role in Flirting (1992). She flew to Australia for the filming. Newton played the part of a Ugandan exchange student studying at an all girl’s boarding school who develops a liking for a boy at a neighboring boy’s school. Nicole Kidman also played alongside Newton in Flirting. Newton was highly praised for her sassy and fun performance.

Still young, Newton focused back to her education and majored in Anthropology at Downing College, Cambridge University. However, she was still acting between exams and studies. During this time, Newton appeared alongside Harvey Keitel in the crima drama, Young Americans and the horror blockbuster Interview with the Vampire in which she played Brad Pitt’s first victim, Creole, the sultry maid. However, Newton gained immense exposure after starring in Jefferson in Paris. She played the part of Sally Hemmings, the alleged mistress and slave of future president, Thomas Jefferson. She was noticed and recognized for her performance. Newton then returned to complete her degree after which she was seen performing again in The Journey of August King and then later seen in Loaded, a mystery thriller.

There was no turning back for Newton; her career blossomed day and night. Newton demonstrated her powerful acting skills in films such as The Leading Man and Gridlock. She played the leading part in Beloved which was based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Toni Morrison . More memorable films from Thandie include Besieged and Mission Impossible 2 where she fully utilized the opportunity to display her beaming beauty and exceptional acting skills.

Despite shining in two very significant roles previously, Newton needed another big break because her acting skills were not being utilized to their full capacity of lately. This cold phase in her career ended in 2002 when she landed a major role in the romantic thriller, The Truth about Charlie. She was the leading lady opposite Mark Wahlberg. After the success of The Truth about Charlie, Newton appeared in a number of significant films during this time including, Shade, The Chronicles of Riddick and then Crash. Newton was highly praised for her performance in Crash by critics. It was also for this very role that she won the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Thandie Newton later appeared in a small but significant role in The Pursuit of Happyness followed by more performances in films including Norbit, Run Fat Boy Run, Rocknrolla and W.

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Thandiwe Newton Height, Weight, Age, Body Statistics

Thandiwe Newton is an English actress, producer, and voice artist who has gained fame with her roles like Maeve Millay in the HBO science-fiction Western and dystopian series Westworld , Christine Thayer in the crime drama film  Crash , Linda in the biographical drama film  The Pursuit of Happyness , Nyah Nordoff-Hall in the action spy film  Mission: Impossible 2 , Beloved in the psychological horror drama film Beloved , Sally Hemings in the Franco-American historical drama film  Jefferson in Paris , Grace Travis in the police drama series  Rogue , Regina Lambert in the mystery film The Truth About Charlie , DCI Roseanne “Roz” Huntley in the police procedural television series Line of Duty , Mona the Hormone Monstress in the adult animated coming-of-age sitcom  Big Mouth , Aisha in the NBC drama series  The Slap , Tangie Adrose in the drama film For Colored Girls , Audrey Newhouse in the drama film The Death & Life of John F. Donovan , and Shandurai in the romantic drama film Besieged . Also, she has received various awards including a Primetime Emmy Award and a British Academy Film Award. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to film and to charity.

Melanie Thandiwe Newton

London, England, United Kingdom

Nationality

Thandiwe Newton went to the Catholic School, which was run by nuns.

Newton also studied dance at the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts .

From 1992 to 1995, she went to Downing College (affiliated with the University of Cambridge) to graduate with a degree in social anthropology.

Actress, Producer, Voice Artist

• Father –  Nick Newton (Laboratory Technician and Artist)
• Mother –  Nyasha Newton (Health Care Worker)
• Siblings –  Jamie Newton (Brother) (Worked in Camera Department)

Thandiwe Newton has been represented by –

• Independent Talent Group Ltd., Talent Agency, London, England, United Kingdom
• Untitled Entertainment, Talent Management Company, Beverly Hills, California, United States

In 2020, her net worth was $14 Million according to CelebrityNetWorth.com.

5 ft 3 in or 160 cm

51 kg or 112.5 lbs

Boyfriend / Spouse

Thandiwe Newton has dated –

• Brad Pitt (1994) – Thandiwe Newton started going out with Hollywood heartthrob Brad Pitt in 1994 after having met on the set of Interview with the Vampire . They went out for about a year before going separate ways.
• Ol Parker (1998-2022) – Thandiwe met English director and writer Ol Parker on the set of BBC drama In Your Dreams . Parker was the scriptwriter while Newton was starring in the show. Thandiwe fell for him immediately, but it took her some time to make him feel the same. After dating for a brief period, Thandiwe got married to Parker in 1998. The couple has three children, daughters Ripley (b. 2000) and Nico (b. 2004), and son Booker Jombe (b. 2014). In April 2022, it was reported that the couple had separated after almost 23 years of marriage.
• Lonr. (2022) – In April 2022, she was rumored to be dating rapper Lonr. after they were spotted kissing in Malibu, California.

Race / Ethnicity

Multiracial (Black and White)

Thandiwe is of Shona Zimbabwean descent on the mother’s side, whereas, has English-Cornish ancestry on the father’s side.

Light Brown

Sexual Orientation

Distinctive features.

Mole mark below the right eye

Measurements

33-23.5-35 in or 84-60-89 cm

2 (US) or 34 (EU)

7 (US) or 4.5 (UK) or 37.5 (EU)

Brand Endorsements

Thandiwe has appeared in print ads and TV commercials for Olay 7 – Total Effects day moisturizer .

Best Known For

• Playing the role of Linda in a biographical drama film, The Pursuit of Happyness  (2006).
• Being cast in the role of Nyah Nordoff-Hall in Mission: Impossible II  (2000).

Thandiwe first appeared in the 1991 dramedy film Flirting in the role of Thandiwe Adjewa.

First TV Show

In 1991, Newton guest appeared in the TV series  The Word as herself in episode #2.2.

Personal Trainer

Thandiwe always had a soft spot for yoga . She practiced various forms of yoga until she found her perfect preference in Jivamukti Yoga. This yoga style is one of the modern yoga forms and is also one of the most rigorous routines around. It combines the vigorous hatha yoga moves with vinyasa-emphasized physical style moves.

The first thing she has in the morning is a juice with ginger and lemon. For the afternoon, she likes to have green juice. She loves juicing so much that whenever she feels hungry in between meals, she drink juices. Overall, she tries to eat clean and avoids anything, she feels bad for her body as she believes such food items speed up the aging process .

Thandiwe Newton Favorite Things

• A movie she has starred in –  Beloved (1998)

Source – Telegraph

Thandiwe Newton Facts

• Her first name is pronounced as Tan-DEE-way.
• In 2000, the Black Men magazine readers (by voting) had included her in the list of “10 Sexiest Women of the Year”.
• In 2002, she was placed on #48 by Stuff Magazine in the “102 Sexiest Women in the World” list.
• In 2011, Thandiwe suffered from bulimia (eating disorder) in the early days of her acting career.
• In 2014, the animal rights organization PETA declared her the sexiest vegan of the year for the UK.
• In the Zimbabwean language, her middle name, Thandiwe translates to ‘beloved.’
• She replaced her near-new BMW X5 with a Toyota Prius after an activist from Greenpeace stuck a sticker on her BMW stating that her car was responsible for climate change.
• She was offered a role in the action movie, Charlie’s Angels, but had to turn down (which eventually went to Lucy Liu ) as she was busy with Mission: Impossible II .
• In 2013, she led the flash mob performance done for One Billion Rising , an organization that works against sexual violence and gender inequality.
• She co-starred as DCI Roseanne “Roz” Huntley in  Line of Duty in 2017 and this performance got her nominated for a British Academy Television Award in the “Best Actress” category.
• In April 2022, Thandiwe was hospitalized due to a foot injury.
• In September 2022, Thandiwe was honored with the “Deauville Talent Award” at the Deauville American Film Festival .
• Thandiwe Newton
• Voice Artist

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Thandie Newton

(actress, dancer, philanthropist), english actress who has starred in both british and american movies..

Quick Facts of Thandie Newton

As Tangie: "Tangie Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet."

It was hysterical. We wanted to make it naughty and fun. When the camera stopped rolling, it was hard to stop laughing

I use the film industry as a pleasure for work and that kind of thing and it's not a pursuit to make me feel happy in my life

God, yeah, I'm good at playing the emotionally strangled person. The woman who is in the worst place in her life. That's me!

Thandie Newton is not having an affair with anyone presently. Her sexual orientation is straight. Mother of Three kids: (Ripley Parker, Nico Parker, Booker Jombe Parker) Ex-wife of Ol Parker, British director.

Who is Thandie Newton dating? Thandie Newton is a divorced woman. She was previously married to Ol Parker , an English screenwriter since 1998. They have 3 children , daughter Ripley Parker born on 17 September 2000, daughter Nico Parker in December 2004, and son Booker Jomber Parker on March 3, 2014. However, the couple recently got divorced after 24 years of marriage. Previously, she had an affair with her director John Duigan in the movie, ‘Flirting’. He was 23 years older than her at the time. She also had a relationship with Brad Pitt for a year (1994-1995). They met while filming ‘Interview with the Vampire’. They broke up after a year of dating.  

Thandie Newton: Biography in Details

Table of Contents

Who is Thandie Newton?

Thandie newton obe is an iconic english actress who has starred in both british and american movies..

The year 2019 welcomed Thandie Melanie Newton with one of the highest honors awarded by the British Empire- Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

Some of them are ‘Mission Impossible II’ and ‘The Pursuit of Happiness. Similarly, Thandie is BAFTA Award winner.

What are the birth facts of Thandie Newton?

Thandie Newton was born Melanie Thandiwe Newton on 6th November 1972,  in Westminster, London, England.

Her father Nick Newton and Mother Nyasha Newton are of British and Zimbabwean ethnicity. Her father is an English laboratory technician and artist.

Thandie Newton grew up in Penzance in Cornwall. She was always beset with negative feelings that she was different from others, that she didn’t fit. In due time all these feelings evaporated as she came to be loved and accepted on an international scale.

Even though Thandie Newton realized that at the age of 5 she was an atheist, ‘an anomaly’ as she recalls.  She was educated in a very religious Catholic school that was predominantly white!

At the age of only 11, she received a scholarship for Performing arts at Tring Park School. She learned to dance at an early age but stopped dancing after an injury.

Between 1992 and 1995, Thandie Newton graduated from Downing College, Cambridge in social anthropology.

Thandie Newton: Professional Life, Career

She started her career at an age of 16 starring in the movie ‘Flirting’ with the aid of movie director John Duigan, with whom she had a six-year relationship.

Thandie Newton then played a house slave in the movie ‘Interview with the vampire’ (1994) starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise .

Thandie Newton then starred in the movie ‘Jefferson in Paris’ portraying Sally Hemings and the horror drama ‘Beloved’. She then earned her fame in ‘Mission Impossible II’ as Nyah Hall.

She also appeared in a low-budget movie ‘It was an accident. Her husband was the screenwriter of the movie.  She has also appeared in TV series.

Newton played Mekemba “Kem” Likasu in the TV series ‘ER’ between 2003 and 2005. She appeared in the series finale in 2009.

In 2004, Thandie Newton played in ‘The Chronicles of Riddick and Crash’. She also starred in the movie ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ in 2006, opposite Will Smith.

Thandie Newton portrayed the character, Maeve Millay, in the 2016 American TV series, ‘Westworld’.

Thandie Newton: Some Achievements, Recognition

2019.  Awarded OBE -Appointed  Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to film and charity.

2016, Awarded Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in Drama Series in Westworld.

2004,  Awarded BAFTA Award for her role in Crash as a supporting actress.

2004, Empire Award for Best Actress

2004, Hollywood Film Festival Award for Ensemble of the Year

Nominations

2006, Nominated  – The Pursuit of Happiness, Nominated – NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

2010, Nominated – Black Reel Award for Best Actress

How much is the net worth of Thandie Newton?

Thandie Newton has a net worth of $ 14 million US as of 2023. Her earnings per year are $1.5 million US and above. Her 2010 movie Colored Girls, grossed $37.8M in the US at the box office.

Thandie Newton: Rumors, Controversy

Thandie Newton has opened up that she was abused by a director who showed her sexual audition to his friends.

At the very beginning of her acting career, she auditioned for a role in which the director asked her to create a sexual scene.

After years at the Cannes Film Festival, she found out that the director has been distributing her audition to his friends. She was only 18 at the time of the audition.

Body Measurements: Height, Weight

Thandie Newton has dark brown eyes and light brown eyes. She is 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighs 51 kgs. Her body stats are 33-23.5-35, dress size 2 US, and shoe size 7 US.

Social Media Profile

Thandie Newton has more than 201,681 k likes on Facebook, holds more than 141 k followers on Twitter, and has more than 145.1 k followers on Instagram.

You may also want to read about the biographies and single or married status of   Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert .

Thandie Newton's Anniversary Dates

Thandie newton's birthday dates, photos of thandie newton.

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